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Cover Photo:<\/strong> After weeks of fighting around the city of Kunduz, schooles reopened. May 2017. [Photo by Qais Azimy]<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Western world poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. One of the undisputed success stories of the war is said to be broadening freedoms of Afghanistan\u2019s women. Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to go to school. Today more than 3.5 million girls are enrolled in school, and there are many programs promoting women’s rights and their freedoms. A significant number of Afghan women who had experienced the worst form of oppression started working as women\u2019s rights activists soon after the fall of the Taliban, often supported by Western-funded NGOs. And with support from the international community, the Afghan women’s condition has improved significantly over the past 18 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rise of an educated generation reached every aspect of social life \u2013 from political leaders to entrepreneurs. Millions of women have voted in national elections, most of them for the first time in their life. Of 249 parliamentary seats, the Afghan Constitution of 2004 guarantees a minimum of 68 seats, or over 25 per cent, for women. Women hold are ministers or deputy ministers, and a number of women serve as ambassadors. A new Ministry of Women’s Affairs was created as part of the government cabinet, with departments throughout the country at the provincial level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Women’s sports programs in Afghanistan were a favourite of Western funding; <\/strong>Afghanistan has a strong women’s soccer team and women’s taekwondo team. Afghanistan now also has an Independent Human Rights Commission chaired by a well-known defender of women\u2019s rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The extent of female engagement has reached the highest level of government in the country today. According to a recent Crisis Group report, \u201cwomen now hold 27 per cent of civil service jobs.\u201d <\/strong>In the 2004 Afghan presidential election, a female medical doctor ran against former president Hamid Karzai. Her name is Massouda Jalal; she was the only female candidate. While she didn\u2019t win, she later served as Minister of Women’s Affairs for Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another success story in Afghanistan is the establishment of freedom of speech and free media. Scholars say that this platform was invaluable in raising and supporting women’s rights; a common observation in research papers and interviews on this subject is that Afghan media are the voice of the voiceless. \u201cMedia absolutely empower women in Afghan society today, especially in public campaigning processes where it is more acceptable for men to participate, so it can be difficult for women to campaign. Media, especially in the 2005 elections, gave women the opportunity to campaign by giving them free access to the campaign,\u201d said Peter Erben,<\/a> a United Nations organizer of the Afghan election in 2005. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMedia help dissolve gender and ethnicity boundaries\u201d said Roya Rahmani<\/a>, a Canada-based activist promoting women’s rights in Afghanistan. She believes Afghan media are particularly useful in fostering education and knowledge.\u201cFor example, by seeing women speaking in the parliament or a woman as an anchor on T.V., this builds confidence of women\u2019s talents that have been missing for a long period of time.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Afghanistan was considered to have one of the freest media in the region among Iran, China and other central Asian countries. This is even more impressive considering how free media had been forbidden under the Taliban regime just 18 years ago. According to a 2016 Asia Foundation survey, Afghanistan had 174 radio stations, 83 private television stations and 22 state-owned provincial TV channels. Today these outlets effectively reach <\/strong>the country\u2019s (estimated) population of 32.2 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those achievements came at a high cost. The international community and the Afghans have paid in blood and treasure in Afghanistan for a prosperous and democratic country where women and human rights are respected. The U.S.-led<\/a> war in Afghanistan is said to be \u201cthe longest war in American history, a conflict that killed more than 3,500 U.S. and NATO soldiers and cost the U.S. taxpayers nearly $900 billion and left thousands of Afghans dead and millions more displaced.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n With a power vacuum looming in the wake of the Taliban regime collapse in the last days of 2001, a group of prominent but underrepresented Afghans gathered in Bonn, Germany, to map out a path to forming a new national government. Coming mostly from the two main groups \u2013 the Northern Alliance who were fighting the Taliban in the north of the country, and the “Rome Group” representing exiled King Zahir Shah \u2013 they planned out a state where women wouldn\u2019t be second-class citizens again. The Bonn Accords of December<\/a> 2001 articulated a three-stage process of political transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hamid Karzai was chosen as chairman of the Interim Administration (I.A.), which operated for six months, at which point the second phase began. The I.A.\u2019s duties included running the state in the short term and preparing to reform the judicial sector and civil service. The government was to temporarily operate under the 1964 Constitution, which called for equality between men and women, with no distinction between them. In the newConstitution that followed, the right to free education up to the undergraduate level, irrespective of gender, was established. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Shahrazad Akbar, head of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, is one of the few Afghan women who studied in the post 9\/11 era in \u201cWestern\u201d post-secondary institutions; she attended Oxford University in England and Smith College in the U.S. Akbar believes a lot has been done for the empowerment of women around Afghanistan over the past 18 years. In her view, access to political participation, health, and education have all increased for women, but she sees that a lot of work remains in some critical areas like access to justice, an important aspect of women’s rights. \u201cFor the first 15 or 16 years, there was a lot of investment in our justice sector, but a lot of it was misguided and for the most part a waste,\u201d said Akbar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For her, the years of fighting and instability in the country also disrupted access to services and justice. Akbar argues that the police force is corrupt, inefficient and unqualified for their roles. She says they do not have the required training or education, a significant number of them may get into the police force because of political connections and nepotism. All of this \u201cagain complicates woman’s access to justice, because women cannot trust the police, the police have harassed women, female police officers are not present in many places,\u201d says Akbar. <\/strong>\u201cConflict and the increasing Taliban influence in parts of the country have unfortunately reversed some positive achievements and woman’s access to education.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Fawzia Koofi\u2019s journey to becoming a politician, she lived through civil war and the Taliban regime, rising to prominence after the collapse of Taliban rule. She was elected to the Afghan Parliament for the first time in 2005, and the following year she was elected deputy speaker of Parliament, the first woman in Afghanistan’s history to hold that position. Koofi says while the positive changes may seem significant compared to the Taliban\u2019s dark ages, it still falls far behind the rest of the world. \u201cWe don’t have much freedom; right now Afghanistan is the worst country in the world to be a woman. So what freedom do we have?\u201d asks Koofi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For Koofi, the achievements of the past 18 years have not erased the consequences of a darker chapter. \u201cThere are horrible cases of violence against women. If you look at the literacy rate, Afghanistan has the lowest of literacy rates in the region,\u201d Koofi said. \u201cIf you look at employment opportunities, if you look at access to economic resources, if you look at the social structures of Afghanistan, even the kinds of freedoms that human beings should actually enjoy within the social norms, Afghan women are deprived of it all.\u201d Sadly, Koofi believes most of these new opportunities were limited to major cities or the capital, Kabul. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Human Rights Watch in 2017, \u201csixteen years after the U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan that ousted the Taliban, an estimated two-thirds of Afghan girls do not attend school.\u201d Based on statistics from the Afghan government, 3.5 million children are out of school and 85 per cent of them are girls, According to Human Rights Watch report up to 80 per cent of Afghan women face forced marriages, many before the age of 16, and 87 per cent of Afghan women are illiterate. If the Taliban return to power this already grim prospect for women will plummet further. The Taliban refuse to give details on how they see women\u2019s rights in the future, they simply describe the issue using religious contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/mrp\/afghanwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2020\/05\/8-1024x683.jpg\")
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